Abstract
This paper examines the historical processes that transformed tar sands
bitumen in the Athabasca river basin into a natural resource of Canada.
The discourse of the resource was first applied to bitumen during the
second half of the nineteenth century as the settler colonial state
dispatched geologists into the region to quantify, calculate, and
measure its properties, and to speculate upon its potential economic
applications. The re-storying of bitumen as a natural resource fostered a
sense of resource nationalism among citizens of this newly formed
state, who projected their fantasies of a settler colonial future upon
the stored potentialities that the resource offered. In turn, this
desire to secure resources on behalf of the Canadian nation served to
consolidate the state's incursion into the Athabasca, enabling the
spatial reorganization of the region in accordance with the settler
resource imaginary. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, I suggest that we
can think about this relationship between settler colonialism and the
resource as a “resource desiring machine,” where both the subject and
the object of desire are co-produced through the relationship of desire
itself. Moreover, I argue that this can help us to rethink the
relationship between resources and violence. Rather than asking how and
when resources cause violence, I argue that violence is inherent to the
very category of resource. Violence is the constitutive moment of
resource-making, and sustaining the resource imaginary relies on the
ongoing violence (threatened or actual) of political and economic
institutions such as private property and the state.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 102044 |
Journal | Political Geography |
Volume | 74 |
Early online date | 24 Jul 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2019 |
Keywords
- Resources
- Violence
- Dispossession
- Setter colonialism
- Resource curse
- Tar sands
- Oil